- Netflix revises its offer for Warner Bros. Discovery to make it an all-cash transaction
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
“Netflix is revising its $72 billion offer for Warner Bros. Discovery to make it an all-cash transaction. Netflix initially put forth a cash and stock deal valued at $27.75 per Warner Bros. share, giving it a total enterprise value of $82.7 billion, including debt. Netflix and Warner Bros. said Tuesday that the revised deal simplifies the transaction structure, provides more certainty of value for Warner Bros. stockholders and speeds up the path to a Warner Bros. shareholder vote. The companies said that the all-cash transaction is still valued at $27.75 per Warner Bros. share. … Netflix has been in a tussle with Paramount Skydance for Warner Bros., with Paramount taking another step in its hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. last week, saying that it would name its own slate of directors before the next shareholder meeting of the Hollywood studio.” (01/20/26)
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/01/20/netflix-all-cash-warner-bros/
- Netherlands: Lawmakers Quit Wilders’s Faction in Threat to Leadership
Source: US News & World Report
“Seven members of the Netherlands’ far-right Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders have split from the party’s 26-member faction in parliament and will form their own group, citing dissatisfaction with his leadership, Wilders and the lawmakers said on Tuesday. The split is the most serious challenge to Wilders'[s] control over his party since its foundation in 2006. Wilders told reporters in The Hague that the seven ‘thought Freedom should be more constructive and work together with the new governing coalition instead of conducting hard opposition.’ ‘We’re not planning to do that.’ He said his party would survive the crisis. The split comes as the centrist, pro-EU D66 party, which won the election last October, is in talks to form a minority government in coalition with the conservative Christian Democrats and the right-wing VVD.” (01/20/26)
- Australia: Parliament passes victim disarmament laws, debates censorship bill
Source: ABC News
“Australia’s Parliament on Tuesday passed new gun restrictions and began debating draft anti-hate speech laws proposed after two shooters killed 15 people at a Jewish festival in Sydney last month in an attack that authorities say was inspired by the Islamic State group. The gun laws create new restrictions on gun ownership and create a government-funded buyback program to compensate people forced to hand in their firearms. Anti-hate speech laws would enable hate groups that don’t fit Australia’s definition of a terrorist organization, such as Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, to be outlawed.” (01/20/26)
- CA: Fire reported at building housing Rad Power Bikes retail store warehouse
Source: electrek
“In yet another unfortunate setback for Rad Power Bikes, a structure fire has been reported at the company’s Huntington Beach retail store. Rad Power Bikes once held the position as the top-selling electric bike retailer in the US, but has been struggling for some time and recently declared bankruptcy while it works to keep the company afloat. … While Rad Power Bikes has not yet confirmed a fire at its facility, the news is increasingly troubling, given that the Consumer Product Safety Commission recently issued an unprecedented safety warning about fire risks associated with some of Rad Power Bikes’ batteries – a charge the e-bike company strongly denies.” (01/20/26)
- UK: Lawyers, rights goup file sanctions request vs. Netanyahu
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“An Arab human rights non-governmental organisation (NGO) has filed a request for United Kingdom sanctions to be lodged against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over ‘incitement to violence and genocide against Palestinians’ in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. British law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn filed the request on Tuesday with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on behalf of the Arab Organisation for Human Rights UK (AOHR UK), seeking targeted financial and travel sanctions against the Israeli leader. … Last year, a United Nations inquiry found that statements from Netanyahu and Israel’s top leadership had amounted to the ‘incitement to commit genocide’ in Gaza during the war. The submission adds that sanctions should be applied to Netanyahu over his responsibility for ‘unlawful military operations in Gaza’ as he is the country’s highest-ranking official.” (01/20/26)
- US regime’s 30-year Treasury yield jumps 9 basis points as trade war fears reignite
Source: CNBC
“U.S. Treasury yields jumped on Tuesday as investors weighed renewed tariff threats from Washington that revived fears of a trade war with Europe. Yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury were last seen trading around 6 basis points higher at 4.287%. Yields on longer-dated 20- and 30-year Treasurys spiked, adding 9 basis points to trade at around 4.885% and 4.93%, respectively. One basis point is equal to 0.01%, and yields and prices move in opposite directions. Trump announced on Saturday that [American buyers of goods from] eight European allies would face increasing tariffs, starting at 10% on Feb. 1 and rising to 25% on June 1, if a deal is not reached that allows Washington to ‘buy’ Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.” (01/20/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/20/us-10-year-treasury-trump-tariff-trade.html
- Afghanistan: ISIS says it bombed Chinese-run restaurant in Kabul over Beijing treatment of Uyghurs
Source: CBC News [UK state media]
“An explosion tore through a Chinese-run restaurant in a hotel in a heavily guarded part of Afghanistan’s capital on Monday, killing a Chinese national and six Afghans and injuring several others including a child, officials said. The restaurant was in the commercial Shahr-e-Naw neighbourhood of Kabul that includes office buildings, shopping complexes and embassies, police spokesperson Khalid Zadran said. The district is considered one of the safest in the city. The Afghan branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack, saying in a statement that it was carried out by a suicide bomber. The Chinese restaurant was jointly run by a Chinese Muslim man, Abdul Majid, his wife, and an Afghan partner, Abdul Jabbar Mahmood, and served the Chinese Muslim community, Zadran said.” (01/19/26)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/kabul-restaurant-explosion-9.7050917
- AZ: Intruder dies after being shot
Source: ABC 15 Arizona
“One person is dead after a shooting involving a home intruder in Buckeye on Sunday night. … Police say a mother and her two adult children were inside the home when they heard someone banging on their door. The woman answered the door, and a man began to force his way inside. A man inside the home grabbed a gun and got to the door just as the unknown intruder was breaking through the security door, stepping inside. The man then fired at the intruder multiple times, killing him.” (01/19/26)
- Trump Exhaustion Syndrome
Source: The Atlantic
by Ashley Parker“A year into Trump’s second term, the emboldened president’s maximalist strategy — pushing every norm to its most elastic, and then a bit beyond, and from that new breaking point pushing yet again — conjures the boiling-frog theory, in which a frog placed in boiling water will immediately hop out, but a frog placed in cool water that is slowly heated will complacently boil to death. (And yes, I know that this amphibious metaphor for failing to notice incremental negative changes is apocryphal, but the lesson is still apt.) Or, as the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon put it to me, the Overton window is moving so far, so quickly, that the more apt way to understand Trump’s strategy is: ‘Fuck the Overton window.'” (01/20/26)
- Will NATO survive Trump?
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jennifer Kavanagh“The integrity of the 76-year-old alliance appears in the balance here, but the row over Greenland is a symptom, not the cause. Today, NATO faces a deep and existential challenge: a fundamental divide between the United States and the alliance’s European members over the type and extent of the threat posed by Russia. Ultimately, it is this fracture — and not the outcome of the current territorial dispute — that will be the alliance’s undoing.” (01/20/26)
- Liberalism Did Not Fail, Conservatism Did
Source: Liberal Currents
by Toby Buckle“Liberalism never was hegemonic, neither as an ideology or a set of political structures. There never was uniform belief in core liberal values. Rather, liberalism sometimes served as something of an ideological lingua franca: A conservative in the ‘90s, arguing for creationism in schools for instance, might say children should be ‘taught the debate’ and ‘free to make up their own minds.’ It’s not that they believed in reasoned debate and intellectual freedom, this was simply a useful rhetoric for them at the time. Now, they increasingly prefer to make their case solely in their own language. Liberalism has lost the illusion of controlling the heavens, while actually gaining followers here on Earth. The world is going through a great ideological realignment, but it is better visualized as ‘consolidation’ rather than a ‘sudden shift.’” (01/20/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/liberalism-did-not-fail-conservatism-did/
- Inflation: A Dirty Word for “Accommodation”
Source: Cobden Centre
by George Ford Smith“As a ‘stealth tax,’ inflation requires no legislation to impose, no agency to collect, and diverts responsibility for damages onto politicians’ favorite whipping boys. It gives government the ability to buy almost anything for nothing, while creating endless problems that serve as a pretext for intervention. Inflation is the foundation of arrogant government and a prescription for our own demise.” (01/20/26)
https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/01/inflation-a-dirty-word-for-accommodation/
- UK Government Pays Guantánamo Prisoner Abu Zubaydah for Complicity in His Torture
Source: Antiwar.com
by Andy Worthington“In what amounts to an extraordinary admission of guilt regarding their historic complicity in the US’s post-9/11 torture program, it was announced on January 11, the 24th anniversary of the opening of the ‘war on terror’ prison at Guantánamo Bay, that the British government has reached a ‘substantial’ out-of-court settlement with Abu Zubaydah. Abu Zubaydah … was the first and most notorious victim of torture in the CIA’s post-9/11 program of extraordinary rendition and torture, which involved the establishment of secret torture facilities in pliant countries around the world — Thailand, Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Morocco — as well as in US facilities in Afghanistan. He was held and tortured in all of these CIA ‘black sites’ for three years and five months from April 2002 until his transfer, in September 2006, to Guantánamo, where he has been held ever since without charge or trial.” (01/20/26)
- The Ephemeral Presidency
Source: Washington Monthly
by Bill Scher“Except for the damage, nothing Trump is doing will last.” (01/19/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/01/19/the-ephemeral-presidency/
- In Support of James Konkin
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by staff“James Konkin is a son, a friend, a student, a churchgoer, a weightlifter, and a vinyl collector. He’s also an anarchist. That is to say, he’s an opponent of the use of coercion in human relationships. Anarchists are people with principles, unpopular principles, but principles nonetheless. James’[s] principles include freedom, self-defense, and self-expression. He’s being punished for holding those principles. James has been targeted by the fascist regime, arrested and charged for constitutionally protected anti-ICE posts. He’s been released on bond for now, but his bail conditions preclude him from using social media so we haven’t heard from him in months.” (01/19/26)
- President Trump: Peace is Popular
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
by Ron Paul“Three recently released polls could spell disaster for Trump’s second term – and for Republicans in this year’s midterm elections. According to a Quinnipiac University Poll released last week, seven in ten Americans oppose the US use of force against Iran, including a solid majority of Republican voters. Eighty percent of the very important independent voters oppose any US attack on Iran. On President Trump’s renewed demand for control of Greenland … that same Quinnipiac poll shows that 86 percent of Americans surveyed oppose taking the territory by force. A majority of 55 percent of Americans polled do not even want President Trump to purchase the massive island. An AP/NORC poll also released last week showed President Trump’s approval rating on foreign policy has shrunk to a new low in his presidency. … Americans are clearly more interested in getting our problems solved at home than acting as policeman for the world.” (01/19/26)
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/president-trump-peace-is-popular
- Food Wars
Source: Independent Institute
by John C Goodman“The federal government has been making recommendations on what we should eat since 1980. Since 1992, those recommendations have been visually summarized in the form of a pyramid. The problem: Ever since the Food Pyramid was published, Americans have been getting progressively fatter. Trump administration officials think they know why: We have been getting bad advice. So, the administration has produced an ‘inverted pyramid,’ making recommendations that in many cases are the exact opposite of the previous ones. For example, instead of being told to limit the consumption of fat and eat carbs, we are now told to eat fat and limit our carbs. Reporters and commentators have treated the new guidelines as a revolutionary challenge to previous expert opinion.” (01/19/26)
- Trump Has Hollowed, Weaponized, and Perverted the Department of Justice
Source: The UnPopulist
by Paul Rosenzweig“It would be difficult to determine which executive agency, aside from the presidency itself, Donald Trump has most distorted or disfigured. That said, the Department of Justice has a strong case. This is a department boasting more than 40 different components and employing roughly 10,000 attorneys. Or, rather, it used to employ that many. Since the start of Trump’s second term, thousands have departed …. while the chaos has been unimaginable and the damage to personal careers immense, the real issue is that the toll on the American system of justice has been incalculable. That’s because this has not been a mere hollowing out. Trump has taken the nation’s central authority for federal law enforcement and repurposed it as a weapon for ideological combat and an instrument of presidential retribution. This is a catastrophe, not a triumph of small government.” (01/19/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trump-has-hollowed-weaponized-and
- SolutionsWatch, 01/20/26
Source: The Corbett Report
“Mutual Aid.” (01/20/26)
- Gracearchy with Jim Babka, episode 151
Source: Gracearchy with Jim Babka
“Does Nick Freitas Think Minneapolis Should Burn?” (01/19/26)
- Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock, 01/19/26
Source: Freedom’s Phoenix
“Aaron Day (ZANO) comes on the show to discuss AI, Zano, Aaron’s potential candidacy (New Hampshire), silver/precious metals market, etc.” (01/19/26)
- Trump Watch, 01/19/26
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“Bizarroland in Venezuela.” (01/19/26)
- Fountainhead Forum, episode 408
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Marialexandra Garcia on the future of Venezuela after the arrest of Nicolas Maduro.” (01/19/26)
- Bulwark Takes, 01/19/26
Source: The Bulwark
“ICE Dragged an Elderly Man in Underwear Into the Freezing Cold.” (01/19/26)
- The Kyle Anzalone Show, 01/19/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Is Trump Making Himself a Dictator? Unchecked Power And A Looming War.” (01/19/26)